Teen Modification - Swearing Discussion

[Darji]

I don't mind swearing but it kinda bothers me if fantasy authors can't come up with more fitting alternatives, particularly to the overused modern English "f--k". For example, the Polish version of Witcher uses a very imaginative language while in the English translation it's just ****s and **** all over.

The question is if polish People have different words for **** you as an outsider normalle do not hear.

 

for example: **** in Germany is not used much here either but the worrd. Scheiße has the similar menaing and is still a swear.

[Katarack21]

F--k, s--t, b---h, etc. are all very old words. From a historical realism point of view, they are not really out of place in a medieval setting at all.

[Falcomomo]

Can somebody just answer one question:

 

what is the word: h*** ? 
I can't think of any rude word beginning with 'h'

[Katarack21]

Hell.

[Nanakamado]

Wow! People what's Your problem with swearing. And this is not even first thread about it.

Adult people swear it's absolutely normal. And when those people are some thugs, bandits or adventurers it's even more normal.

About language in Witcher as a pole this game is vulgar as... You know what Maybe some words are stylized as medival but those are mostly contemporary words.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Nanakamado

[vattghern]

F--k, s--t, b---h, etc. are all very old words. From a historical realism point of view, they are not really out of place in a medieval setting at all.

While that's true, I doubt they were the exclusive go-to words to use in every possible context. These days when you're writing a "ruff'n'tuff' character, f--k seems to be the curse word of choice to convey just how ruff'n'tuff he is.

[Mungri]

I never swear for I am The Lord God.

[Danathion]

Pillars of Eternity received an M rating from the ESRB.  Most notable difference from BGEE which had  a T rating, was the inclusion of the F-bomb.

 

We had a discussion about a swear toggle for those who want to save the children ,  and varied meaningless philosophical discussions about child -rearing  etc...  Personally, I'd like to play without the swearing, but I'm happy to do the gruntwork and mod it out without requesting Obsidian to rewrite the thing.  

 

 

Now that Pillars is here, on linux I've been able to locate the english strings here:

 

  Pillars of Eternity/game/PillarsOfEternity_Data/data/localized/en

 

Simple grepping:

(modified for forum etiquette)

    grep -Hr "[Ff]u**" * | wc -l  

 

yields

 

22 lines of conversation with f***

38 lines of conversation with s***

83 lines of conversation with d***

114 lines of conversation with h***

1  lines of conversation with c***

 

I really, really appreciate the open design of Pillars to modding.  I'll be able to change these trivially.   Now I need your help,

 

What ideas do the lore-masters  here have for an appropriate Eora based cursing replacement?  Admittedly,  I have less problems with d*** and h*** since they have legitimate religious connotations, and will probably leave them for my playthrough.  However,  if you ever wanted to design a new cursing system to support a deep and rich world,  why not exercise that on all of our behalfs

 

Some of my  off the top of my head  lame (and kind of silly) idea replacements are -  

 

f***  - Lerg ( Lerging,  lerger)

s*** - muhk ( muhkhead  )

d*** - fogg  (fogged, fogging )

h*** - hest  -- I'm sure there's a more appropriate reincarnate religion version for this. 

c*** - poof

 

I'm happy to do a search and replace and then upload when the mod site gets going, for those who want to play without the cursing.

 

I'm in favour of a mod censoring strong language, for me never mind children, and commend the effort!

 

Rather than invent new swear words, I'd suggest replacing the f's and s's with d's and h's respectively. For voiced lines, if clipping out the offensive word/phrase from the audio file is too difficult, not playing them at all would be okay with me.

[StubbinMyToe]

Question for the OP.... Why did you need Linux to do that?  roflmao

[draek]

Here is a good list which is lore friendly

 

Holy ****: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n18/colin-burrow/frogs-knickers

[Klice]

It's not about swearing. It's about a difficult lore, this game is simply not for kids, they do not understand as much as adults. It's likę trying to make Silent Hill kids friendly.

Interestingly enough, I've played the first silent hill when I was around 10-11 years old and I was absolutely fascinated by it, even though I think I didn't catch all the subtleties or symbolism that could have shocked adults.

 

Don't overprotect children, sooner or later they will end up in front of something harsh and even if they don't I think they are not as fragile as many people would think. And if parents are anxious their children may stumble upon something they wouldn't understand or may trouble them, they can always talk with their children and explain stuff to them.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Klice

[Darji]

 

It's not about swearing. It's about a difficult lore, this game is simply not for kids, they do not understand as much as adults. It's likę trying to make Silent Hill kids friendly.

Interestingly enough, I've played the first silent hill when I was around 10-11 years old and I was absolutely fascinated by it, even though I think I didn't catch all the subtleties or symbolism that could have shocked adults.

 

Don't overprotect children, sooner or later they would end up in front of something harsh and even if they don't,  I think they are not as fragile as many people would think. And if parents are anxious their children may stumble upon something they wouldn't understand or may trouble them, they can always talk with their children and explain stuff to them.

 

Silent hill is honestly not really ****ed up. thhe  stuff you do or can do. Or rather hear is really ****ed up in POE.  But yeah I agree we should not overprotect children. But it also depends on the child and the Age of course.

 

But if you are like the OP already worried about swearing and you want to protect your child then this game is just not for you at all.

[tdphys]

Sorry to come late to my thread, but It got buried for a while and it was a long time till I noticed someone necroed it...

 

Some quick answers,   actually editing out the swearing is for my personal enjoyment, and the hazard that my kids might happen upon the text while I'm playing.

(I'm quite certain that my kids aren't dropping f-bombs at school by the way)    It's true that there is some swearing in the voice acting,  I'd fix it if I have time and means, but It's not a big problem to me,since I read through the voiced over text and move on before the voice acting is usually done, anyways.  You can also turn the voice acting down if necessary,  but can't turn off text swearing, obviously.

 

Thing is,  editing the swearing out of the text is trivial, so I did it.   ( And I did it on Linux, since It's obviously far superior to windows, and I wanted to prove that superiority to yall,  perhaps you can Grep in windows,  enlighten me /sarc)

 

I'd agree that a lot of the content is indeed "mature" in the sense that the topics can be disturbing and has sexual content.  I'd like to point out that so does BG2 (teen rating) and lots of other things.   Will I let my kids play this game?  Probably when they're late teens.   A show that does a good job of *modifying*  their swearing is Battlestar Galactica ( frac what? ).  To me, this made the show more enjoyable... it also had a lot of sexuality and death etc..

 

I'm not familiar with the history of our swears... obviously d*** and H*** are quite ancient, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised about some of the others.  Right now I've just replaced the  swearing with an appropriate number of ####.   I'll see about posting the mod on nexus or whatever.

Edited April 1, 2015 by tdphys

[sparklecat]

Yeah, we've got a lot of people here asking why people would want to take out the swearing so their kids could play - nobody's actually said that's what they want to do, I just put in a warning that it wouldn't really help for any parents who come by trying to figure out if this game is/can be appropriate for their kids and stumble across the thread.

[ednanf]

I have absolutely nothing against this idea, but it’s weird to think that a f word is bad and killing people is not.

 

The game has so many elements much stronger than a simple and common word like this one. IMO if one is not suited to have contact with a f word, the game itself won’t be suited for obvious reasons.

[grumbold99]

I like games with mature themes but I don't think it's necessary to drop the f-bomb in any game dialogue. It's just down to individual taste, I suppose.

[cpt_pickard]

Seeing Battlestar Galactica mentioned - I have always found the language adjustments ridiculous and distracting and NOT a good example of how to do it. Probably a matter of personal taste, I do not see anything particularly wrong with vulgar expressions. 

[Ekaros]

How many total lines of dialog is there? Is there relatively lot of svearing?

 

In the end, the themes in game are so dark that I don't think censorship really is needed. Sometimes you just need to accept that the world game is placed in is so grim that people need those expletives...

[tdphys]

Just thought I'd resurrect this old thread to let everyone know I've posted a sanitized version of the english text localization on nexus mods.  you can find it there with some brief instructions.  Let me know if there is problems.

[DocDoomII]

Even if your remove the text, what about the voice over? 

[McMayhem]

This is a 100% genuine and non-snarky question, as I really am interested in this:

 

OP - Would you say that a mature game with a swear/gore filter option included would make you more likely to purchase said game?

 

I know a few people who feel this way and I'm interested to see if it's a more common notion than I thought.

[Emerwyn]

Good one OP. While you are at it, mod out all the bleeding and dismembering that happens in every combat, along with the quests where you purposely send people (oftentimes innocents) to their cruel death or you are given the option to execute them yourself, also mod out the undead raising, like, well you at times fight vampires, ghouls, zombies, skelletons... and all those profanities.

 

Furthermore, mod out the pagan gods in the game, and make the Church of Christ to be the only religion of the game. And force everyone to play Ned Flanders as their main character.

 

Then I'll be safe to show the game to my children. Even if the game is rated as "M" to make it clear that they shouldn't be playing it in the first place. 

[Longknife]

Have the people who would censor this game for containing the F-bomb never been on a middle school or high school bus?

[Rosveen]

Have the people who would censor this game for containing the F-bomb never been on a middle school or high school bus?

To be fair, if I could censor (or outright mute) a high school bus, I would do it without hesitation.

[RedSocialKnight]

It's a good idea to make the game more accessible to teenagers by adding higher levels of swearing, inappropriate sexual behavior, and drug use.

 

But I don't think that goes far enough. What about the things that are most central to the lives of teenagers -- like sulking?

 

To make the game really appeal to a teenage market, the PC needs to have the option to react to any situation by exclaiming "Ugh! God, this is so boring! I wish we were all dead!" and then slinking off to Brighthollow to **** resentfully for the next four hours.

 

Also, I await the Epic Eyeroll Mod, although that might throw off the game balance by being too OP.